Paul Sandhu
Chief Executive Officer
Paul Sandhu has specialized in developing, introducing and commercializing new technologies throughout his career. He has worked closely with founders in the energy transition, aviation, A.I. and fintech sectors to establish their businesses around key technologies and implement a strategic plan for business expansion. This work led him to establish H2-Genesis, working together with new frontier technology focused on energy transition and in particular Hydrogen infrastructure. He is regularly featured on Bloomberg, CNBC, Wall Street Journal, Asian Investor and other news media for his perspective on market strategy and thematic investing.
Previously Paul was head of Multi-asset solutions and asset allocation at BNP Paribas Asset Management in Asia. Prior to joining BNP Paribas AM, Paul led Conning Asset Management’s expansion into Asia as a start-up to a business with over USD30 billion in AuM contributing over half of the firm’s global revenue. Paul Sandhu graduated from the University of British Columbia with a specialization in Theoretical Physics and has spent his career working as an executive team member in asset management/banking/venture capital companies to optimize businesses in their respective local markets and internationally. He has extensive experience in successfully leading technical teams from the development and innovation stage through to the commercialization stage. Paul’s methodical and analytical scientific background coupled with his years of experience in financial management and capital market strategy uniquely positions him to realize the goals of private companies in the energy transition and technology space.
John Simkiss
Strategic Advisor
John Simkiss is a serial entrepreneur with over two decades of experience in North American energy markets. A co-founder of Harvest Fund Advisors, acquired by Blackstone in 2017, he is a senior managing director in Blackstone Credit & Insurance (BXCI) and serves on the group’s counterparty credit committee. He is Harvest’s head trader, strategist, and risk manager where he trades a $6 billion portfolio of public upstream and midstream portfolios.
John Simkiss is a significant activist investor in Hydrogen companies with private investments on three continents. John’s investments focus on tackling challenges in Hydrogen production, storage and infrastructure. By coupling commercial expertise with first class teams of inventors across a carefully selected portfolio of companies John has guided and curated them to grow successfully. Mr. Simkiss is a graduate of Trinity College in Hartford, CT.
Calvin Johnson
Chief Development Officer
Calvin Johnson is highly skilled with a track record of optimizing Energy businesses for profits while reducing tail risk. Calvin has over 30 years of experience in the North American energy markets including commercial development, asset optimization, trading, origination, structuring, and capital markets.
Calvin was the Vice President of Trading and Asset Optimization at TransAlta where he was responsible for the company’s trading and origination businesses for power and natural gas. Heading asset optimization, fuels management, structuring and valuation, and risk management of the company’s fleet of generation assets including thermal and renewable power generation.
Prior to that Calvin was a Managing Director at CIBC responsible for providing energy related risk management, capital markets, and financial solutions to corporate and government clients across Canada. Calvin graduated from the University of Calgary with a degree in Economics.
Dr. Jacky Wang
Senior Technical Advisor
Dr. Jingyi (Jacky) Wang Ph.D, P Eng. is a Proton Co-Founder. Dr. Wang has 15 years combined experience in chemical engineering and reservoir engineering with petroleum industry and research, expertise in the areas of unconventional resources recovery technology. He is also a Research Associate in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Calgary.
Carmine Battista
Chief Commercial Officer
Carmine Battista brings decades of successful experience in energy trading and ventures to this ground-breaking company. Carmine has a background in Energy trading and has focused his commercial activities on the energy transition, founding and working with emerging hydrogen and CCS climate tech companies. Carmine co-founded GenH2, a NASA backed hydrogen infrastructure venture. Prior to joining Proton Carmine was Managing Director of Kwantix a hedge fund with a broad private capital mandate, that structured renewable energy infrastructure offtake agreements and traded in carbon credit and REC markets globally.
Carmine has a Masters from Oxford University with a specialization in Classical Economics. Carmine began his career at Shell, trading oil derivatives and structuring long term physical oil deals in emerging markets across the globe. Following his time at Shell, Carmine was the Head of Trading for the Americas at the Chinese National Oil company Sinopec, opening the Houston office and building a substantial trading platform focusing on the global arbitrage of Oil, LPG, and refined products that generated record profits.